The Maps of the Pulteney Estate

by

Bill Treichler

Maps have always been vital to travelers and voyagers. They have been
just as indispensable to land developers with large tracts of new country
to advertise and sell. The agents for the land holdings of the Pulteney
group in New York State acquired a great many maps of western New York.
They needed maps to be able to keep track of the land that they had for
sale, and they needed maps to be able to show their prospective buyers
where land was available and how near it was to towns and streams or navigable
lakes or to other settlers. A map is a means to indicate the relative
locations of known places as well as a way to locate oneself by recognizable
physical features: prominent hills, lakes and streams, noted on the map
itself.

Charles Williamson and later overseers of the Pulteney property had maps
drawn for this great tract of land. They also bought and used maps. The
Pulteney Estate had hundreds of maps of their holdings. Even maps of areas
outside the original purchase were in their collection because Williamson
exchanged Pulteney land for other land and in that way the estate acquired
some land in eastern New York and even other states. To readily locate
the property they had acquired in these other regions, they obtained maps
of that area for their records. For instance, in the collection there
are a number of maps of localities in Madison county, New York.

In the large collection of maps that was amassed by the managers of the
estate's land are the state survey maps made by David H. Burr in 1829.
This was the first complete atlas of New York State. Also in the collection
are maps made by the men who surveyed the property for Oliver Phelps and
Nathaniel Gorham, the original purchasers of the Massachusetts claim,
and of the men who resurveyed the property for Robert Morris. There are
also maps drawn by surveyors who made local measurements when each parcel
was sold.

The first Pre-emption Line was run north from the Pennsylvania border
by Col. Hugh Maxwell working for Phelps and Gorham and another surveyor
representing Seth Reed and Peter Ryckman. Phelps and Gorham were buying
the Massachusetts claim west of the line and Reed and Ryckman were buying
sixteen thousand acres east of the line along Seneca lake. The line was
run west of true north. This offset reduced the amount of Phelps and Gorham's
purchase. They became aware of the error and when they sold to Morris
they deeded their portion east of the line to him, too. He engaged Joseph
and Benjamin Ellicott, who had just surveyed the city of Washington, to
supervise a resurvey in 1790. In the new survey of the Pre-emption Line
they employed a newly developed sighting instrument, the transit, just
brought to this country from Germany. Augustus Porter, Frederick Saxton,
Morgan Jones, and Mr. Armstrong were all in the surveying party. The land
between the two lines, a wedge called the gore, contained 85,000 acres
not counting the area in Seneca lake. The city of Geneva was in this gore.
. A law in 1793 awarded Williamson 56,000 acres of land near Sodus Bay
as recompense for land sold out of the gore by New York.

Some of the early maps have notations on them saying that the map is
inaccurate, because the survey was based on the original Pre-emption Line
and did not account for the gore.

The maps showed the blocks of property that had been sold by Phelps
and Gorham and others prior to the Pulteney purchase and, of course, they
marked the property sold already by the Pulteney group.

Hugh Maxwell had subdivided most of the northern part of the tract by
1789. Also among the earliest surveyors of subdivisions were Porter, Adlum
and Saxton. The Pulteney purchase was divided into seven ranges six miles
wide and these into townships six miles square. This is thought to be
the first rectangular subdivision of a large area. Later this method was
used in the Northwest Territory and then for all of the western states.

These maps are interesting, too, because the names of the buyers are
recorded on their lots shown on the maps. Many early names appear, names
that are still common in different towns. Charles Williamson's name is
one frequently seen, often on large blocks. Williamson evidently bought
or held these tracts for his own speculation. His large personal holdings
may have had some connection with his being replaced with another agent
by the owners.

In the southeastern corner of the area, a large amount of property was
held by the Erwin family. One map shows equal parallel and adjoining strips
of land all with different Erwin names, as though all the children of
a large family had been left a share of a large plot. Just north and west
of the Erwins was property held by members of the Cooper family. One of
these maps has a small drawing of a house marked "Homestead".

Some of the maps are old, dated 1795; many have no date on them; and
some are dated as recently as 1895. The earliest maps show trails and
later ones mark railroads. Some of the maps look well used with ragged
edges, breaks at the folds, and a tattered appearance. Others look as
if they were never out of the office.

These maps were kept at the Pulteney Land Office which stood at the corner
of Lackawanna and Morris streets in Bath, just west of the Presbyterian
Church and facing Pulteney Square. The maps stayed in this building until
it became the first hospital in Bath. Later they were stored in the County
Clerk's building on the other side of the Square. Here they stayed, ignored
and largely forgotten, until 1975 when Charles Oliver became Steuben County
Historian. He realized their great historical significance and arranged
to get them photographed and copies made to preserve their information
and make it more available for viewing and study.

The Corning Glass Works made negatives and prints of the maps without
charge for the labor and equipment use. A grant obtained through the Steuben
County Historical Society from the federal government paid for the materials
used to photograph and reproduce the maps. The map prints are now in transparent
plastic pockets bound in very large books, much like over-sized photo
albums.

There are few maps in the set of the northwestern region of the holdings
of the Pulteney group. However, maps of the country around Geneseo are
in the Wadsworth Collection at Geneseo College. The Wadsworth family in
Geneseo had large land holdings and they handled land sales for the Pulteney
Estate in that area so that the land office at Bath didn't need, and had
very few, maps of the country around Geneseo.

The last of the Pulteney land wasn't sold until 1904. Sometime later
the maps passed into the possession of Steuben County. A number of the
maps bear the stamp of Reuben Oldfield, a former county clerk.

The Wadsworth Collection was given to Geneseo College recently. At the
time, four or five years ago, it was appraised at $160,000. This figure
gives some measure of the present day antiquarian value of such a collection.

Charles Oliver and the people who supported and assisted him, and the
people at the Corning Glass Works who photographed the maps have our appreciation
and gratitude for preserving this great visual record of the early settlement
and steady development of this region.

Richard Sherer, Steuben County Historian, suggests that if photo-reduced
copies of these maps were available for purchase many people with an interest
in the settlement of this part of New York State would be able to acquire
their own collection of the maps. This could be a valuable project of
the Steuben County Historical Society. Mr. Sherer has for sale full-sized
copies of some of these maps. The price is $10 apiece.